#comics comints

[canmom]

Comics mini-Comints: Dungeon Meshi

reread dungeon meshi through to the end. still such a great manga. here are immediate thoughts - if I end up having time and energy I hope I can write something that goes deeper!

ironically i was only a few chapters from the end when I stopped keeping up, but I was struggling to remember all the characters and context, so reading it through in one go was definitely an ideal way to achieve maximum impact there.

ryoko kui does a very elegant job of handling a transition from 'silly antics' to 'big dramatic fantasy' while still keeping the central thematic throughline - eating and being eaten, belonging to an ecosystem, the significance of sacrificing others to achieve your own desires. a lot of setups pay off in a way that feels meticulously planned - and of course the crux of the final showdown revolves around characters attempting to eat each other, of course the big payoff is a huge feast that symbolically unites all the conflicting factions. it is maybe a bit too neat and happy for my taste, but it's undeniably tightly executed - it never loses sight of what it's about. especially compared to something like Frieren, it's an incredibly coherent serialisation, up there with e.g. Fullmetal Alchemist.

kui's art style deserves all kinds of praise - it feels effortlessly simple, but it clearly communicates all sorts of different shapes and body types and it's really fun to see her play around with remixing the different visual elements when she switches the races around. in general Laius's autistic monster loving ways clearly reflect kui's own deeply felt appreciation for all the ways people and animals live (accentuated further by all the extra sketches the scanlators tuck in). in a way you could kinda call it like Parts Unknown the fantasy manga.

the stakes of the final conflict are interesting - there is much to be said about the framing of 'desire' and its fulfilment, of this occult idea of 'the infinite'. lots you could put in relation to other manga, and also buddhism. (in particular I really want to develop a comparison to Made In Abyss, there are so many parallels, it just might be too spicy for tumblr lmao).

one thing I really like about it is how much its fantasy dungeon-exploring setting owes to D&D and other TTRPGs, rather than videogames. monster ecology has been a fascination of that game since the early days of Dragon magazine, and Kui sharply zeroes in on some of the intrinsic conflicts baked in to that fantasy milieu, notably the lifespan thing, while smartly avoiding the traps of 'evil races'. there's some really fun nods to the weirder monster manual entries. and in a story with so many characters and factions, it does a genuinely incredible job of furnishing everyone with understandable, reasonable motivations, conflicts drawn from their context just like the monsters are explained by their ecology.

and one thing that I particularly appreciate is like... how much it is able to simultaneously understand and sympathise with a character and also show us how and why they'd rub others the wrong way. it's impossible not to like our main group, they're all such charming dorks and the manga leads you along with all the crazy rpg party shit they do, but at the same time you definitely find yourself thinking 'guy's got a point' in the kabru chapters lmao. I'm projecting hard bc i don't really know a thing about ryōko kui but laius def feels like the sort of depiction of having an autism that you can only do if you've lived it.

but yeah, it's a fuzzy ending where it all turns out well. but what's the deeper thrust of it all? there's a funny moment where marcille is like 'maybe in the end our journey is about learning to accept death' and the grouchy old gnome guy completely laughs this off as naive, because death doesn't mean anything. and indeed their big plan pays off, and falin does indeed come back just fine. but still, through all of this it asks you to bite the bullet that being a living creature means eating to survive, at the cost of other creatures, with the other side being that one day you too will be eaten. in contrast to this honest way of being is the beguiling fantasy of infinity, where all your desires are immediately fulfilled - this is shown as a dangerous path of corruption that produces madness and manipulability. having limits and rubbing up against the wishes of others, or 'doing things you don't want to do' as izutsumi's arc puts it, becomes necessary for having some kind of definition as a subject. the thing that makes the demon concrete as an entity is a desire, or appetite, that can't immediately be fulfilled.

of course we can connect this to the idea of narrative conflict. a standard advice for putting together a plot is to ask what each character wants and why they can't get it. wanting something implies movement. and indeed over the course of this story, we see that while having too many desires fulfilled too readily leads to incoherence and callousness, equally a character who is left catatonic as their desires have been eaten by the demon must be reawakened to activity by finding a new desire.

it's kinda Buddhist innit. neither the opulence of the palace nor asceticism. desires are what tie you to the world. but mixed with ecology: what a creature does to find the energy to live is what defines its lifestyle, its form.

this is probably where I'd start talking about entropy gradients and shit if i wasn't typing this on a phone at 1:30am lmao.

but yeah - it's a powerful move to go from 'D&D monster recipe show sendup' to 'living with the inherently violent nature of being an organism fated to live in a finite sum game' and yet Dungeon Meshi makes it feel natural and convincing, while remaining tremendously charming and funny throughout. ryōko kui is definitely some kind of genius, and I can't wait to see what her next act is gonna be. it's all definitely making me appreciate the act of eating a lot more.

next story on my plate is probably The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere, which sounds like it will present a very gnarly thematic contrast.

[victorsandvanquishers]

That Lovely Face, Like a Moon, Where Did He Go?

Fandom: DC Comics

Ships: Jon Kent/Jay Nakamura

Ratings: T+

Warnings: Injuries, godly shenanigans, angst, whump

Story Synopsis: It’s a regular Tuesday at the office when it all goes to Hell in a handbasket, but that’s supposed to be commonplace in Metropolis, even though Steelworks Corporation’s Chief Press Officer, Jay Nakamura, doesn’t believe in Heaven nor Hell. Regardless, it’s never a boring day in the City of Tomorrow. After all, what’s a bad day at work compared to an eternity in darkness?

[takes place in-canon; written for 2023 JayJon Week, Day 2 - Work]

~~~

I wanted to write a Jay-centric whumpcute! Really hope he and Jon are featured in another solo again soon. Until they do, I'm going to pepper in my own personal headcanons into my stories until we get something more conk crete. Thank you for reading, and don't forget to leave comints! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

@jayjonweek

[curiosity-killed]

the problem with making decisions while fully knowing the pros/cons is that my brain is a gremlin

[ALT ID: a sketchy comic strip in black and white. The first part shows a human-ish figure crouched down and gnawing on a laptop which shows a new fic on AO3 on the screen. The gremlin is chanting “comint comint comint.” The next panel shows a person standing and looking down on the gremlin disdainfully, saying “You know, if you want engagement, you should just update a fic people actually read.” The third panel shows a veritable dumpster of blobs and book-like shapes, with “OCs,” “original fic,” and “poetry” scattered throughout. From within, a disheveled, flaming-red-eyed head emerges, shouting “enGAGEMENT?! y’all are gettin’ READ?!?!” The other two look on in mild distress.]

[soap-brain]

lads does ANYONE have that comic of that cat who knocks a fic off the table as a means of posting it and then baps it a LOT to get "comints" out of it????

[authenticcadence18]

I’ve felt like the “COMINT??” cat all afternoon🤣

[clubolive]

The mortifying ordeal of posting my art online... don’t look at me while I share what I create

[daughterofhecata]

7, 17, 18, 27, 30, 37 & 43? 😊

[fic writer ask game]

7. Do you prefer to read short fics or long fics?

Both? Both! Both is good! But turns out, I can't read long fics anymore that are already finished when I come across them, because high word count is intimidating.

17. How obsessively do you sit and stare at your fic after you’ve just posted and wait for feedback?

Very. I'm literally that cat comic with 'comints?'. This one.

18. Do you have a WIP that you keep telling yourself you’ll eventually get back to, but deep down you know that’s probably a lie?

Yeah. The [untitled project]. I did recently brainstorm some plot ideas with Tiargo but idk if I'll ever actually get back to it. Because it would be a long fic - two parts, actually - with both a complicated case and complicated relationships.

27. Do you like to give your readers some warning of what might be coming or just slap them in the face with content at random?

Sometimes one, sometimes the other. Depends on how much I want people to read a story - ie I'm much more likely to throw out some pwp at a random time than something I've been working on for a long time/that means something to me.

30. Post a snippet from your current WIP without context - no more than 300 words.

...das musst du grad sagen, was? Du kennst doch sowieso schon mehr snippets als sonst jemand.

You're getting the Mafia AU, because that is the most fun of the things I'm working on right now.

Der Sohn des Hausherren hatte sich offenbar ein paar mächtige Feinde gemacht, weshalb er vorerst das Anwesen maximal unter Bewachung verlassen durfte, und auch das nur in Ausnahmefällen.

Davon wollte der Junge - tatsächlich war er dreiundzwanzig oder vierundzwanzig, aber für Cotta blieb er ein Junge - nur leider nichts wissen, weshalb er unter ständiger Aufsicht bleiben musste.

Seinem letzten Aufpasser war der Junge zweimal entwischt - was dem Mann nicht gut bekommen war. Cotta fühlte sich ein bisschen wie in einem verfluchten Märchen. Die zertanzten Schuhe, genau genommen. Er wusste bloß noch nicht, ob er drei Nächte verschlafen oder am Ende das Geheimnis lüften würde.

Nicht, dass es hier ein Geheimnis zu lüften gäbe. Er durfte den verdammten Bengel bloß nicht aus den Augen lassen.

37. Give an update on your current WIP - if you don’t have one, give a sneak peek to a title or idea that you have and would like to write.

Okay, I'm currently mostly working on the perfect part about it, which is going surprisingly well! It's at just over 8k right now, with two chapters done, one close to finished and two that are mostly fragments. Then there are the the one with the halo sequels - part 3 is done and ready for posting, part 4 is at ~2.5 of 3k, and part 5 still needs some serious work. Also, the Mafia AU that I'm trying very hard not to write at 1.2k, and then there's the secret project with @keravnous that I should be working on (and probably will try to on the weekend, sorry for my complete silence! 🙈)

43. Talk about a positive experience with fanfiction or the fanfiction community that you will always remember.

uuuuh, getting to know all you people? 🙈 Like, the first discord/the rockybeachnet time in early 2019? Straight up saved my life, because I suddenly had something I was excited for again. Same with everyone who commented on my stories during that time. You and Tiargo? Literally the only people ever that I've been texting reguarly for more than, idk, a week or something. People here on tumblr? Amazing people who more than once inspired me to write more. Just. Falling into the DDF fandom was the best thing that could have happened to me, and (along with me quitting my job) literally saved my life.

[intergalacticwanderer]

And my brain is once again that comic of the cat going "comints? comints???" in regards to AO3

[sgrumby]

You know that one meme that's like. A writer depicted as a cat shoving something (their update to a fic) off a desk and then immediately looking over at it like "comint?" That is me. It has been a week. There's no real reason for me telling you this cause honestly it has nothing to do with you other than being in the same fandom but like. I can't get the little comic out of my head. Yes I am going "Comint? Validashun?" every time I post. No I don't know what else to do. If I was fine. I'm not fine because I am. No I'm not <3

It's always like that!!! Whenever I post anything I spend the rest of the day obsessively looking at it to see if anyone's commented!!!

[canmom]

Comics Comints: Witch Hat Atelier

Welcome back to Comics Comints, the series where I comint on comics.

First up! Comics Comints now has a proper archive. Enjoy larger images, alt text, and tags for navigation.

Tonight, it’s time we did a manga! If you recall that post about paneling and time from a couple of weeks ago, you know it’s one I liked rather a lot...

Witch Hat Atelier (とんがり帽子のアトリエ Tongari Bōshi no Atorie)

(writing and art: Kamome Shirahama (白浜 鴎), trans. Rasmus-kun, #dropout and Project Vinland scanlation groups. I’m going to be using the name romanisations decided on by #dropout since they’re generally a lot better than the official ones lmao)

Ahh, Witch Hat Atelier. A truly wonderful comic, such that it’s tough to know where to begin.

Sometimes I compare it to getting my hands on a whole new Berserk, because Shirahama’s drawings have that same sense of being exquisite: gorgeously flowing cloth and hair and perfectly placed hatching, overwhelming confidence and attention to detail, an old-school romantic fantasy world you could really fall into. (Also I think she draws faces kinda like Miura does.)

Witch Hat Atelier begins with a girl called Coco living in a fantasy world in which the population is divided into humans and witches. Not unlike a certain Akko, she idealises magic. But she ends up performing magic by accident, unleashing a spell that turns her mother to stone. After this, the kindly Professor Quifrey, who definitely harbours no ulterior motive, breaks the taboo and lets her into the secret: anyone could do magic with the right tools (a pen and special ink), and the witches are maintaining an elaborate masquerade for the sake of containing terrible magical superweapons.

Or at least, the dominant Pointed Hat Witches are. Their enemies, a conspiracy known as the Brimhats, want to break these artificial shackles... and for reasons we don’t yet know, they see this novice witch Coco as their key.

Anyway, the thing that got me to read Witch Hat Atelier was this video...

...by manga youtuber Lines in Motion, which analyses Shirahama’s inventive panelling. It’s really nicely edited and a great primer on the principles of comic composition.

Anyway, per that video, Shirahama took inspiration from not just other manga, but old school European illustration like John Tenniel and Arthur Rackham - and good old Moebius of course. Unfortunately, this video doesn’t provide its sources, and I struggle to find some kind of interview where I can get the artist’s own words. Still, looking at her style, she’s not shy about gesturing to Art Nouveau, or the general tradition of European etching.

And when Shirahama uses colour - sadly only occasionally, though I can understand why! - she deploys beautiful watercolours that call to mind the same tradition (and perhaps certain recent manga like The Girl From The Other Side).

So, before we dive into talking about the comic itself, let me see what I can dig up about Kamome Shirahama herself and her inspirations. She studied art in Japan, at Tokyo University of the Arts, and starting publishing comics in the seinen magazine Fellows! in 2011; this led to a bizarre lucky break when her art was noticed at Comic-Con by someone at Marvel, which gave her a foothold into the Western comics industry, starting with this character Doctor Strange in 2015 (source):

Even seven years ago, you can see Shirahama could really fucking draw. This apparently continued with various other covers for DC and Marvel; meanwhile, having finished her two-year project Eniale & Dewiela (エニデヴィ, Enidevi) about an angel and devil brought together by a mutual enthusiasm for fashion, she embarked on Witch Hat Atelier in 2016 which continues to the present, with 64 issues available at the time of writing.

All this results in perhaps a perfectly optimised Art Build: both her parents are artists, she went to art school, she’s got a familiarity with both Japanese and Western illustration styles to fuel her. And that’s also perfect material for Witch Hat Atelier, which is about - among many other things - the struggles of learning art.

That word Atelier is interesting to me. In Japanese, it seems like アトリエ atorie is not an entirely uncommon word for an artist’s workshop even in the present. In English, its scope is generally much narrower: it refers to a particular tradition of art schools that began in the middle ages and lasted roughly until photography, whose primary function was to teach students how to draw in perspective using a variety of mechanical means like wire grids or sight-size techniques.

(a painting by Jefferson Chalfant of an atelier from the late 1800s - source Wikimedia Commons. I’m vaguely amused by the thought of this guy Chalfant showing up to the atelier and flexing on the students by painting not just the model but also all the other students, the room behind them, and thumbnails of all their paintings.)

Nowadays you’re most likely to hear the word ‘atelier’ in the context of the Atelier series of games, in which you play as a young witch and your atelier is essentially an alchemist’s workshop where you brew potions. I don’t have enough data to say how far the association between ateliers and magic goes - I’ve seen at least one more instance (Maria Umineko uses the word) - but in any case...

‘Magic systems’ in fantasy fiction are tricky things. Without some care, they can just be colour that carries very little thematic weight. Fortunately this is very much not true of Witch Hat Atelier. The basic premise of its system is that magic is created by drawing precise circles with certain symbolic elements whose size relationships combine to specify the magic effect. It’s explained in some detail, although there’s enough vague that Shirahama can have some real fun with the imagery.

The important part, though, is that while it’s not exactly the same as representative illustration, it’s close enough to it to be analogous. In Quifrey’s atelier, Coco meets a group of young students who each have their own styles of magic. Riché, for example, was treated cruelly by an arrogant teacher who insisted on orthodoxy, and now stubbornly insists on practicing only her own specific magical techniques; an important turning point sees her learn how to lean on other people without sacrificing her personal style. Coco has some skills she can lean on as a tailor’s daughter, but still has to drill fundamentals like learning to draw in a single smooth confident stroke.

It’s not quite as ‘trials of an artist’ as something like Blue Period (no spoilers, I’ve only read a bit of that), but it is a deeply compelling element of the mix...

However, magic is only somewhat like illustration. It’s also useful. And this leads to a fascinating subtheme around disability. One of the rules the Pointed Hat witches operate under is that they can’t use magic on the human body. So when a boy Coustas’s legs are injured by haywire magic, witches can give him an adorable deer legs wheelchair...

...but he faces many of the same obstacles as a real wheelchair user in a world not built for access. Coco and her friend Tartar try to figure out a method to help him without breaking the rules, eventually coming on the solution of creating a flying cloak as a new accessibility device, seemingly to everyone’s satisfaction... but then (spoilers) Coustas runs into a Brimhat who’s like “actually we have no compunctions doing a transhumanism on you” and give him legs back (if weirder), turning him against the MCs. But that same power is one we just recently saw used to forcibly transform people against their will. It’s an interesting mirror of the common ‘disability in sci-fi’ question; Coustas’s struggle is not merely that he is disabled, but that the world does not accomodate him and this completely strips him of independence, despite very little ill will from anyone.

And to her credit, Shirahama doesn’t seem to be trying to be going for a didactic angle on this (Coustas should or shoudn’t want...), but treats it as a worthwhile and interesting conflict, and I’m genuinely excited to see how it will resolve. Nor is Coustas the only user of a ‘sealchair’ - one of the main leaders of the witches uses one due to some kind of unspecified fatigue condition, even transforming it in battle, something which largely passes without comment since that’s not really the main focus of the character.

Anyway, despite their separate social system, the witches in Witch Hat Atelier have to make a living, which they do primarily by selling magic items to the non-magical population - subject to various safety regulations which are pretty strict and have a curious attitude towards deception in keeping with the Pointed Hat witches’ MO (don’t make a heatless flame or children might get the wrong idea!). So despite the wonder conveyed so effectively in Shirahama’s vistas of floating islands and twisting paths and underwater cities, it’s a magic that’s very grounded, shaped by the needs of a feudal society. She’s incredibly good at tying in these kinds of ~worldbuilding~ tidbit to the evolving character arcs, so the setting as a whole feels warm and lived-in but also shot through with genuine intractable tensions.

(I tend to show the more elaborate compositions with borders and splash panels, but even the more standard rectangular-panel pages have a real elegance to them)

One of these tensions is that between adults and children. There are many terrible teachers in the pages of Witch Hat Atelier - ones who berate their charges and shatter their self-confidence, or even in one chapter we witness a teacher who will not defend her student who is sexually assaulted by a nobleman and fights back (the only time the subject is brought up in the comic, and handled with care). Even for Quifrey, the picture of a benevolent instructor or good dad lmao, we have the lurking question of whether he intends to use Coco as an opportunity to pursue revenge against the Brimhats.

The children are surrounded by a world that doesn’t seem to work the way it should, rules that don’t seem to make sense but they have to follow, in a way that feels very genuine. And they have reason to fear: the standard punishment of the Pointed Hat witches is to wipe someone’s entire memories of magic and start them in a new life as a civilian. The fear of an extreme, draconian punishment leads the kids to end up keeping their own secrets.

But the adults are far from all bad. If, perhaps, the good relationships are a tragedy waiting to happen...

Then there are the witches and the secular authorities - monarchs of various kingdoms who are itching to get their hands on the secrets of magic. As the cast expands - and believe me it expands a lot - we start getting more and more points of view, and Shirahama is very deft at sketching a character’s motivation and vibe in just a few pages.

When it comes to comics about students at a school for magic, inevitably comparisons will be drawn to the elephant in the room, A Wizard of Earths- what’s that? - oh, yeah, that one.

So, yeah, according to Wikipedia, Shirahama took inspiration from both Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. Frankly I think she writes wrings around both of them, but then she’s writing a much more modern style of fantasy for an audience literate in the genre, with modern concerns, so perhaps it’s not a surprise I’d like it more than Tolkien. (Rowling is a thoroughly mean-spirited fascist who represents the worst of this country, and if I were to go through the comparison, it would just be a list of things that I think Shirahama does a whole lot better, so I won’t do that.)

What is a little interesting is seeing how, after Potter’s international proliferation, some of the imagery of the robe and wizard hat and school for magic starts to grow into a standard setting in Japanese fiction. Obviously Trigger’s Little Witch Academia is the big one - and I’m fond of it, but it shares little with it beyond the main character’s enchantment (ha) with the idea of magic. NieR Reincarnation is much less likely to ping on anyone’s radar, being a fairly obscure mobile gacha game, but it also took a magic school as the setting for some of its brief tragedies. No idea if that’s going to continue, or if it’s just a passing thing, but brain see pattern...

Anyway, it wouldn’t be Comics Comints without a detailed art breakdown, would it? There’s so much going on in Shirahama’s pages that it will be hard to capture everything, nor is this series really supposed to be comprehensive. Since I’ve talked a bunch about paneling already, let’s take a closer look at the characters...

Let’s start with kids, since most of the characters are kids. Here’s a handful of panels from chapter 42, page 13, trans. #Dropout (the work done primarily by Hypomanix and Botanyrobot in this issue). I think it’s a decently neutral example of a drawing of Coco.

There’s a lot that goes into a drawing of a face, to make it look delicate. But to my mind (c.f. the human head, a series I still intend to finish) the key elements are...

the profile of the face - this shape determines a lot

the size, shape, and style of the eyes

the balance of features

the way you draw hair

I said previously that Shirahama’s style reminded me of Kentaro Miura’s, but that’s mostly when she’s drawing kids. Shirahama’s designs are definitely within the broader ‘anime’ milieu, but there’s an old-school quality. Let’s break it down...

face profile - very rounded shapes. ubiquitous ‘cheek bump’ (pink), which helps the characters appear young.

as a standard ‘anime mannequin’ head, the overall aspect ratio is quite square, the neck is thin and relatively central, and the eyeline stays low.

eyes - this is where Shirahama puts most of the visual information (density of lines), with multiple rings of hatched shadows and highlights. In the picture above I’ve outlined the main shapes that go into drawing Coco’s eyes. Some of them can be identified as anatomical features, others highlights and shadows indicating form, some (the blue crescent shaped shadow for example) are perhaps just pure visual elements? Importantly, the outer outline of the eye is broken at the sides. All this complex shading gives a kind of shiny, watery feeling that suggests emotion bubbling under the surface even if the rest of the expression is very simple.

Coco’s eyes are very wide, representing her innocence. More adult characters tend to have narrower eyes, as we’ll see.

balance of the features

'Big eyes, small mouth’ as the name of the old roleplaying game goes. Note that Coco’s face is wider than it is tall. Just the end of the nose is drawn, but its placement suggests the 3D form of the face so it doesn’t appear flat overall. The suggest is there’s more nose but the bridge of the nose is so smooth that it doesn’t really get a line - if you’ve ever seen a plastic anime figurine you get the idea.

The emphasis is very much on the eyes.

hair

Hair is something that Shirahama really excels at, and honestly I want to absorb her secrets, so lets have a look at the way she does things. The way you can look at it is basically by dividing the hair into primary and secondary forms.

Coco here has very straight hair where the principle is particularly clear. First, you divide the hairstyle as a whole into large groups or blocks where the hair is flowing a particular way. For Coco, she has a part on her left (our right); her fringe forms one block of hair, which may go over or under the block of hair coming down from the top of her head depending on the picture.

Within each block, the hair is constructed out of smaller crescent-shaped elements which overlap each other (indicated by T-intersections between lines), and follow the overall flow. These merge towards the root of the hair block (the lines dividing them disappear)...

Then, additional lines can be drawn inside each block to add additional texture.

Judging by videos I’ve seen, Shirahama seems to be able to do these kinds of line straight away in ink, which is why they look so clean and confident.

For characters with darker hair, similar design principles apply, but instead of indicating the flow of the hair through outlines, Shirahama uses white lines within the form to indicate specular highlights. (Contrast Coustas’s eyes here to Coco’s incidentally: their emotional states are communicated by the different shading styles).

Now, let’s take a look at Quifrey and Orugio, two of the main adult characters in the comic...

Quifrey (right) has to carry a lot of the comic, and if you look at Shirahama’s design notes, he’s also one whose design evolved the most towards the fairly bishie one he got in the end. He has to be goofy, kindly, and sometimes sinister. He’s certainly not a villain, but he is willing to do some pretty shady shit - but he’s also good at presenting a generally sort of bemused affect, which is indicated by simplifying his design a lot.

The Gandalf/Dumbledore sort of archetype, but less magisterial - Quifrey is not an especially powerful witch. There’s a very overt indication of his divided nature in his glasses - there’s a plot reason why they’re different colours but the combination of dark lens and fringe hiding his eye screams “he’s hiding something”.

Quifrey’s friend Orugio (left) meanwhile is a more straightforward character, hard working, down to earth and straight-laced but out of a genuine sense of caring. Honestly, the fact he has facial hair is something that’s very rare in manga! One thing I notice just now while searching for suitably illustrative panels is that his face is often seen angled down, while Quifrey is more often seen from below.

The basic construction is similar to the kids’ heads, but a few differences to notice. As is the rule, adults’ eyes are proportionally a lot smaller than kids’ eyes. The construction of the face is slightly more angular, and they actually have noses.

Quifrey’s hair is a lot messier than Coco’s, but it’s essentially constructed out of the same overlapping crescents, which don’t especially respect gravity for Quifrey. Orugio’s hair is a solid dark mass, with a lot of loose strands around the edges, but you can still kind of see the locks of hair providing structure to the shape.

Shirahama’s lines are usually very even and thin, but she’ll often use a thicker line in a face closeup to emphasise the jawline, and in general a very subtly thicker line to outline forms than to hatch inside them. She uses screentones as you can see, but also extensively uses very neat hatching to create blocks of shadow or blend lines into larger shadow shapes. Her lines have an incredible amount of confidence and precision.

That’s faces, but what about the figure as a whole? One of Shirahama’s real gifts is her ability to draw flowing cloth with an incredible sense of motion. Here’s a classic Shirahama splash panel...

The contrast of organic shapes of cloth against the large circular element is something Shirahama loves doing - as is the use of negative space.

Breaking down the cloth: you have the solid lines representing the outer edge of folds, and then hatching within the body of the cloak to indicate shadows. In some places the hatching runs along the direction of the folds, in other cases perpendicular with it, all blending together. You can basically see how it breaks down into conical pipe folds that overlap each other, coming to a sinuous line at the bottom. Then this biiiig shape is contrasted against Quifrey’s thin neck, always upright, and the area of detail in his face. It’s just like. Really expert drawing by someone who knows the craft up and down.

There aren’t a lot of opportunities to see how Shirahama goes about designing one of these figures, but there are a couple of roughs she’s put out, so let me take a brief look at that to wrap up the drawing section.

this is a rejected draft for one of the first pages in the story. it looks like Shirahama roughs things out in quite a thick pencil, then uses a blue pencil(?) to refine, before inking. I suspect there may be more steps between, which she rubs out before inking...

These early designs seem to have been drawn into a thicker pen, with less care taken over the linework. What’s most interesting to me is how much Quifrey’s head shape changed as Shirahama’s concept of the character evolved.

Finally here’s a timelapse video of Shirahama inking a drawing of Coco.

You can see she starts with a pencil sketch that has the major shapes nailed down but not yet the line quality. She outlines all the main shapes, erases the pencils, then fills in the details at a slightly lower line weight. She’s got a ridiculously confident hand considering how much detail is going straight to ink in a way that makes my digital artist brain flinch.

The way Shirahama uses hatching reminds me a bit of Kimihiko Fujisaka, artist for Voice of Cards. I think I gotta practice more in ink lol, digital just doesn’t seem to give the same feel. Something about the mechanics of the way the pen flicks across the paper, maybe?

And that’s I think everything I have to say. Read this comic, it’s good! ...oh wait, there’s an anime coming! As yet, the studio and staff are to be determined. Shirahama’s style seems very difficult to capture in animation, so I’ll be curious to see how they handle it.

Next up: The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal I think.

[regalrain]

Also it hasn’t even been like 5 minutes but now I’m the exact picture of that one comic of a cat going ‘comints’??? And whacking at the Fic

[victorsandvanquishers]

Tinctures of Lithium

Fandom: DC Comics

Ships: Gen

Ratings: T+

Warnings: reboot trauma, preboot haunting the reboot, Joe Casey compliant, violence

Story Synopsis: Lor Zod is no stranger to pain, but what he can’t seem to understand is why his nightmares punish him with images of strangers. Who is the woman made of flames? Why is Superman here? Why does he remember experiencing love when Lor’s never loved a single person nor thing in his entire life – including himself?

[in-canon, Action Comics and Kneel Before Zod compliant; written for 2024 Superfam Horror Week, Day 4 - The Forgotten One]

~~~

For a full appreciation of this story, I recommend reading the Zod family backup in Action Comics 1060 (current era), as well as Kneel Before Zod #1 by Joe Casey. For additional fun, you can also read the Pre-Flashpoint Chris Kent books. I know this sounds like Sinister Sons promotional content, but I swear to you it's not LOL!

Thank you for joining Lor in his shenanigans, and don't forget to leave comints! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

[veliseraptor]

so out of curiosity I decided to check out that note counter thing and cumulatively I have received 1,688,052 notes, which, holy shit. guess I have been on this website for over a decade now though

Top original posts

1). The F. Scott Fitzgerald/Hemingway one. 233,627 notes - Mar 16 2016

2). The Incoming Mood one. 210,310 notes - May 12 2018

3). The “ignoring fic for petty reasons” one. 146,859 notes - Aug 11 2017

4). The modern Hamlet editorial cartoon one. 73,921 notes - Jan 27 2016

5). The “conflict does not always break down to right vs. wrong” one. 19,521 notes - Jul 2 2020

6). The “comints?” one, which I suspect mostly got the traction it has because of the adorable comic now attached. 19,434 notes - Oct 7 2020

7). Wonder Woman’s optimism meta-ish stuff. 18,220 notes - Jan 28 2018

8). Some scans from Ms. Marvel #17. 15,359 notes - Apr 20 2017

9). The “sometimes all you want is a toxic ship” one. 8,624 notes - Apr 22 2020

10). Doesn’t everyone want an armful of border collies? 8,098 notes - May 16 2017

[snarwor]

Wheres that “comint? koodoh? validayshun?” comic

[podcastbigbang]

me: *knows full well that signups still don’t open for another 12 hours yet at least*

also me: *poking podcast bigbang acc with a stick or like the cat from that one comints? comic* sign ips? sign ips?

me, already set up with the sign up spreadsheet, sign ups forms, the synopsis google form, and the claiming doc: sign ups?? friends?? sign ups??

- mod cai (ps. twelve hours to go!!)

I’m vibrating with excitement over the idea of having people in the server I cannot WAIT -Ren

[honeydvew]

anyone got that post thats like “comints” and its like a short comic with a cat ab fanfic and looking for comments? i need it for reasons